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Pixel Scroll 8/31/17 Scrollfinger. He’s The Man, The Man With The First-Fifth Touch, A Pixel’s Touch

(1) NEW VINTAGES. At Young People Read Old SFF, James Davis Nicoll says he’s “Testing to see if the issue was sf or old sf” by mixing in more recent work like “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight”.

During Phase II, one story in four will be modern (post-2000). I am curious if modern stories appeal to my readers more than the classic ones have.

First up is Xia Jia’s A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight.

Xia Jia is a popular Chinese SF author. Her work has recently begun to be translated into English, in large part due to the efforts of Ken Liu. A teacher and a writer, she describes her idiosyncratic mix of hard and soft science fiction “porridge SF”. I’ve been very impressed by the work of hers that I have been lucky enough to read. Will my young readers be similarly impressed?

Judith Moffett’s Holy Ground Trilogy describes events following aliens called the Hefn coming to Earth and attempting to stop humans destroying the planet. “This book is the record of what happened to some of us because the Hefn came.” writes the character Nancy Sandford in the prologue section of The Ragged World entitled ‘The Hefn on Earth’.

This deliberately simplistic description obscures a salient point. The Holy Ground Trilogy has aliens throughout, they play many significant roles, and yet the trilogy is not really about the Aliens. It is about relationships. Deeply embedded in Moffett’s work are analyses of religion, sexuality and environmentalism. The personal is political amidst issues of human to human relationships, and human engagement with the planet.

Maybe you want a kilo of fresh beef, but you can only get it with two cans of pressed meat, a kilo of hamburger meat, and a kilo of frozen vegetables. Well, why not? But when it arrives, the vegetables are freezer burned and the hamburger is green on the inside. At least you got the beef and the SPAM, right?

The science fiction digest, Analog, is much the same. For the past few years, the general pattern has been for the magazine to include a serial of high quality, and the rest of the space larded out with substandard shorts and ridiculous “science” articles on crackpot topics.

Hello! (Yay, I’ve finally made it to an ama on time!) I absolutely LOVED the broken earth trilogy, thank you so much for that. It really blew my mind and made me think, question so much – as a story, as well as an incredibly masterful piece of writing. Thank you!

My question is about the second person narrative : what made you use it? What impact did you want it to have on the reader? Any tips/guidelines for using second person as opposed to first or third person?

I used second person because it felt right for the story. The impact I hoped for was simultaneously a sense of detachment that would replicate Essun’s level of disassociation (I was trying to convey her PTSD) and a level of intimacy that second seems to handle well. No special tips, other than noting that it’s gonna feel weird at first because most of us don’t use second on the regular. You get used to it, though.

The Stone Sky is a novel in conversation with the two Hugo Award winning novels which precede it, it is a novel in conversation the fantasy genre as a whole, and it is a novel in conversation with the culture in which it was written. That’s a lot for one novel to take on, but N.K. Jemisin is more than up to the task. The first two volumes of The Broken Earth trilogy set the bar so incredibly high that it would take a remarkable novel to even approach that level, let alone meet it. The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate were masterworks. Jemisin has set an impossible standard for herself, but her control in telling one unified story shows off the skill of an author at the height of her powers. The Stone Sky more than lives up to the promise and standard of those first two Broken Earth novels. Each novel in The Broken Earth requires a moment of centering, a moment to process and figure what sort of story Jemisin is telling – because even though this it truly a cohesive whole, each novel has its own distinct and tight focus setting it apart.

In July, a California federal judge, in response to all the bad publicity San Diego Comic-Con has received over lawsuit, issued a suppression order that prevents both the San Diego and Salt Lake Comic Con producers from making certain statements regarding the ongoing litigation.

Neither Brandenburg nor Farr would comment on the case beyond two statements.

“We think they have a great event,” Brandenburg said. “We just don’t agree with them on the ownership of ‘comic con.'”

He added: “Bless their hearts.”

(7) DRAGON AWARDS. The anonymous “Red Panda Fraction” sent out a tweetstorm criticizing how the Dragon Awards are run.

They also tweeted a set of voting recommendations for every category at the very last minute before the deadline.

(8) THE MUSIC GOES ROUND AND ROUND. The Wrap’s Ryan Gajewski, in “‘Simpsons’ Producers Say Fired Composer Alf Clausen Will Still Have ‘Ongoing Role’”, reports that Alf Clausen, who has done the music for all the episodes of The Simpsons for the past 27 years except for the Main Title by Danny Elfman, has been sacked because the show’s producers “wanted to go in a different direction,” although the producers assert he will still be involved in some unspecified way.

BeastMaster the TV series ran from 1999-2002 for three seasons. It’s listed as an American/Canadian/Australian series. It was broadcast on Canadian TV initially and filmed mainly in Australia. I’m not clear who owns it. It was loosely based on the 1982 movie The Beastmaster . (Which also has some low budget sequels)

The series centers around Dar (David Goddard) who can talk to animals and protects them as well as saving villagers from various threats. His has a friend Tao (Jackson Rain) a healer whom he travels with. They are later joined by Arina (Marjean Holden) a warrior. Marjean Holden later played the medical doctor on the Babylon 5 spin-off series Crusade.

(14) ON CONVENTION SAFETY. Catherynne Valente wrote a series of Tweets about a bad experience while in Poland for a con (but not at the con itself) which begins here —

A thread about convention safety & sexual harassment. Now, it starts off harrowing, but ends w/something important & positive. Stick with me

The book that I think beautifully explores the connection between science/technology and society is Cyteen by CJ Cherryh. I loved this book immediately and it is still one of my favorite works of literature of all time. I read it as a teenager when I was just truly figuring out how I was going to pursue writing professionally and it opened my mind to what science fiction could be. I hadn’t read a lot of adult SF at that point and I became enthralled by the layers of storytelling: through complex characters, politics, questions of ethics and morality, an examination of power and ego and psychology, the confluence of genetics and programming…all with the backdrop of a fascinating future society that spanned star systems. Maybe most directly, Cyteen is a perfect example of how to tell an intimate, intricate story on a human level while entwining it in large concepts. Since I was still a teenager when I read it, her depiction of politics and its connection with developing technologies in society opened my eyes and stayed with me. The ethical boundaries of science and research she explored stayed with me. The fragility and strength of people’s psyches stayed with me. So much of what was in that novel informed how I approached my own writing and the real world going forward, in the very least because I felt just a little more informed about how such societal and psychological complexities might work with the impact of controversial scientific exploration.

(16) HEAR THE WAIL ON THE RAIL. Take a break from eating pumpkin-flavored Kit-Kat bars and head down to Griffith Park to celebrate Halloween aboard the Ghost Train at the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum: “Ghost Train: Beloved Griffith Park Ride Returns”.

Ever hopped aboard one of the family-fun trains overseen by Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum? We’re talking about the not-full-sized, but full-sized-on-fun engines that chugga-chugga at Griffith Park. If you know these trains, you likely know about the group’s popular Ghost Train, a seasonal happening that rolls just ahead of Halloween.

Full review:Cibola Burn is the fourth book in the Expanse series, and as such it depicts the next step in the extended story that has been threaded through the books: The first attempt to colonize one of the new planets made accessible by the ring gates that resulted from the alien protomolecule’s actions in the first three books. Or rather, this book is about two competing efforts to colonize one of the new planets, because if anything has been made clear in the previous books, when the denizens of Corey’s universe have been faced with inscrutable alien technology, they make sure to bring their petty human conflicts with them when they try to deal with it. Consequently, when presented with more than thirteen hundred new solar systems to explore, humanity almost immediately falls to fighting over a single one.

(20) A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. Steve J. Wright has assigned himself the quest of reading and blogging about Vox Day’s epic fantasy novel A Throne of Bones and has written half-a-dozen posts this past week. The first is: A Throne of Bones by “Vox Day” – Preamble, on Managing Expectations. Wright doesn’t think much of the writer either as a storyteller or a technician, and all the posts come at the book at an angle similar to this passage in the third post, A Throne of Bones – Chapter 1:

Well. Basically, in this chapter, Beale is managing to do a little with a lot – his style continues to be ponderous, awkward and clunky, nothing very much happens, and the deficiencies of style lead to the failure of his attempts at characterization – Corvus is clearly meant to be a super-competent military commander, but his laboured and over-long dialogue make him come across as a pompous old windbag instead.

I think that’s the trap – Wright is giving a solid, honest review of something he doesn’t find very interesting. And it’s contagious. When a fanwriter feels contempt for the material he’s discussing, the only way to win is to treat it humorously, because otherwise an audience finds it wearing to keep reading someone taking a superior point of view.

Disney shocked fans today by announcing that it is working on a new entry in the Star Wars franchise that will tell the backstory of Luke Skywalker’s fallen mother figure, Aunt Beru.

“The people have spoken, and they’ve said ‘Give me as many of these films as humanly possible,’” said director Ellen Hodge. “So that’s what they’re going to get. Aunt Beru: A Star Wars Story will show what an ass kicking farmer’s wife Beru was before the tragic events in A New Hope.”

The site where this parody news is posted declares, “Hard Drive is the most ethical gaming journalism on the internet.” Ah — there’s my clue.

Science and Star Wars is a series that explores, explains, and demonstrates parallels between the Lucasfilm sci-fi epic and real-world scientific breakthroughs the saga has inspired. The IBM-sponsored series, hosted by Anthony Carboni, will feature IBM researchers, science experts, guest stars, and IBM’s Watson artificial-intelligence platform. It will run exclusively on Facebook through the Facebook Anthology branded-content program.

(23) LORD OF THE INVENTORY. I was paging through Think Geek’s Tolkien merchandise and came across a gold-plated tungsten carbide One Ring. Next time I get married, one of those for sure!

But I couldn’t buy a Hobbit Map of Middle Earth even if I wanted to – they’re Out of Stock! (Haven’t these people been reading Alex Acks?)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Aaron Pound, Steve Green, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Jon Del Arroz, and IanP for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

73 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/31/17 Scrollfinger. He’s The Man, The Man With The First-Fifth Touch, A Pixel’s Touch”

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I know notheenk about the details — don’t even know which year represents which locale. I only looked at the Big Picture!

But I find it extremely amusing when pups (like Niemeier did on his own blog a couple of days ago) shout with glee about the Hugos supposedly dying out just because the 2017 nominating numbers were smaller than the 2016 numbers — completely ignoring both the overall trend and the fact that final votes still rose even after the pups scarpered off to cheaper and easier to scam pastures.

These people have NO sense of history, and they apparently have no concern for reality either.

So I went trawling through the Hugo Awards website back to 2000, and prior to 2008, information is incomplete. Not all Worldcons provided total numbers of nominating ballots and/or final ballots. From memory, the Worldcon numbers (for nominations especially) were low in the early to mid 2000s. There were discussions around LiveJournal expressing surprise at how few nominations you needed to get on the final ballot of some of the lesser categories. That coupled with the existence of the Hugo Packet was the beginning of a push: for the small supporting membership fee, get a swag of works (yes, I know it is not guaranteed) *and* a good chance to influence the Hugo final ballot!

Key for below:
??? no information found
(Number in brackets) Category with highest number of nominations/votes because total numbers not available

We’ve got some comic knowledge here (I’m looking especially at Kip and Kurt here, but anyone will do.) Anyone familiar with a comic strip called “What a Family” from the 1950s? Any info to offer beyond what little I was able to dig up in this thread? It is looking like this newspaper comic has never been published as a collection.

When looking at the nominating ballots, remember that the eligible electorate is the union of the current and previous (and for the past few years through next year, the following) years’ Worldcons’ members. Thus 2016’s eligible nominating electorate was the union of 2015-2017 as of the end of January 2016. Because Spokane was so large, I expect that there were a lot more people eligible to nominate in 2016 than were eligible (union of 2016-2018) in 2017. (Yes, Helsinki ended up with a very large total membership and attendance, but a whole lot of that came after the end of January 2017.) Also note that the single-day attendees won’t get WSFS voting rights and thus can’t nominate next year unless they join 2018 (or 2019) by the end of this year.

(End of this year due to a change ratified this year. Also, 2018 will be the last year that members of the following Worldcon can also nominate, as part of a change ratified this year.)

The Hugo packet officially goes back to at least Anticipation (2009). Unofficially, it goes back to Scalzi’s volunteer efforts to get items for Hugo voters to read. (2006? I haven’t found the year for that, yet.)

Read Me file for the Hugo/Campbell Voters Electronic Editions of Spin and Old Man’s War

Dear Hugo/Campbell Voter:

Hi, there. We (Robert Charles Wilson and John Scalzi) want to thank you for downloading these electronic versions of our novels, both of which have been nominated for the 2006 Best Novel Hugo (John Scalzi has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer). We hope these help you as your make your voting choices for the Hugo and the Campbell — and also, of course, we hope you enjoy the novels for themselves.

The version of the novels you have here are the versions we provided Tor for their production process. You may see a few typos here and there or other small variances from the final published book.

We are offering these electronic editions to 2006 Hugo and Campbell voters exclusively, and as that is the case, we have one request: please don’t share these editions outside your household. This is, in its entirety, the extent of our digital rights management with these files: A polite request. You’re adults, we’re adults, and we figure asking nicely will do a better job than any other method yet devised by man.

Chip Hitchcock: Aussiecon 4 kept the trend despite being the smallest Worldcon (other than previous Aussiecons) in decades? I wonder whether the Aussies took their voting rights seriously (possible given the winners, at least in Novel) or there was just a general increase (although I’d love to see the numbers further back as I suspect the Oughts of being depressed).

I’ve updated my charts to reflect this year’s figures, and have created a separate chart which shows just Nominating and Voting totals*. From 2007 on back, the data is very sparse. In cases where total ballots weren’t given, but ballots by category were provided, I used the total from the largest category as “total ballots”.

It actually looks as though nominating and voting totals were reasonably stable from LA Con III (1996) through Aussiecon 4 (2010), then started really trending upward with Renovation in 2011. I’m not sure what year online voting began, but I’m sure it has contributed greatly to the rise in participation.

Chip Hitchcock: I’m also surprised at the huge bump for Reno; was that the first year of the Hugo Packet?

The first Worldcon-sponsored Hugo Voter’s Packet was for Anticipation in 2009, so I think that technically this was the 9th year of the packet. However, in 2008, John Scalzi used his personal contacts to obtain electronic texts of four novels and an offer to acquire the fifth for Hugo voters which I would also consider a packet. In 2006 and 2007 he managed to get a couple of works made available as well.

* apologies for missing legend labels; after 1/2 hour of trying to get these to show up properly in the uploaded files, I finally just gave up.

I’ve updated my charts to reflect this year’s figures, and have created a separate chart which shows just Nominating and Voting totals*. From 2007 on back, the data is very sparse. In cases where total ballots weren’t given, but ballots by category were provided, I used the total from the largest category as “total ballots”.

I’ll see what information I can pull up from my archived files this weekend. (I was Hugo administrator in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2015.)

“Wright is giving a solid, honest review of something he doesn’t find very interesting. ”
This is objectively not true. You can tell from Wright’s comments about Beale he has no intention of being objective. This is simply his attempt to demonstrate how much he hates somebody he obviously hates by describing in minute detail how much he hates everything about the book. This is pettiness and nastiness disguised as a book review. What is irritating is that you realize this, and have decided to ignore the obvious in order to promote a hateful little man’s hateful screed. Nice.

I have not read any of Throne of Bones, but I did read the first chapter of its sequel A Sea of Skulls the other day when I noticed it was available for free on Amazon (it may still be, I don’t know).

The book opens with a young girl considering her future life, in which she is destined to be made, against her wishes, into a broodmare in a program to breed more people with magical gifts; then her family and friends are killed (on page) by orcs as they invade her village and home; then the girl is raped (on page, in detail) by the same orcs while lying amongst the dead bodies of her friends and family (another orc nearby is concurrently raping the dead body of the young girl’s mother); then the girl sees orcs playing soccer with her younger brother’s head; then she goes full Carrie on the orcs and turns them into living torches; then the girl gets thoroughly punctured with multiple crossbow bolts and dies.